The Ghosts of Amity Park
by TheAlmightyWordAlchemist
Summary: Before they were the ghosts that Danny Phantom is constantly facing up against and trying to put them back into the Ghost Zone, they were people. They had lives before they become those ghostly villains. These are the stories of their lives and deaths before they became the Ghosts of Amity Park.
1. The Day Youngblood Died

**Before they were ghosts, they were people too with real lives and real deaths. These are the stories of how the ghosts of Amity Park came to be. *Please review and I'll love you!***

**Chapter One: The Day Youngblood Died**

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"All children grow up, except for one," is probably a story you have all heard by now, young children of Amity Park; but I'm here to tell you that this is wrong. There are many children who never grow up; they never had the chance to. One of those children you have probably seen flying around here. He usually flies about with his Familiar—sometimes in the form of a parrot or cowboy horse—and dressed up as a pirate or cowboy. He's troublesome and bratty, but he never sets out to cause too much harm. He's just a young child trapped in children's limbo who wants to play.

The story that I'm going to tell you today is the story of the day Youngblood died.

He wasn't always known as Youngblood. In fact, over some forty years ago, he was a six year old boy named Tommy. He was an imaginative one, that Tommy. He was always running around and playing games without a care in the world. Tommy was really creative in that his games always acted out certain stories and fantasies that swam around in that small, crazy head of his. His favorite one to play out was the tale of a ghastly pirate by the name of Long Beard Tom. He would play his games for hours on end. He would have played them all day long if opportunity had let him.

Tommy's life, as small as it might have been, wasn't a happy one, sad to say. He lived with his parents and older brother in a rickety shack hidden down a long dirt road in the woods. They—Tommy and his brother—never went to school. Their father felt that education was unnecessary and that real knowledge for life was learned hands-on in an out of school environment.

Tommy's father was a mean, old bastard. Nothing was ever good enough for him. Every night he would get drunk, get angry, and beat the shit out of anyone who dared to get close to him. Unfortunately, due to the fact that he had been born a rather sick and weakly child, Tommy was often the butt of his father's beatings.

His mother, after years and years of senseless and brutal spousal abuse, had completely withdrawn from herself. She never tried to stop the beatings anymore, whether it be for herself or her young children. She would only retreat farther into herself and whisper a prayer that one day the beatings might stop.

One fateful day Tommy was woken up by the sound of his father screaming at his mother. He grabbed his pillow and buried his face into its fluffy depths. He hated that voice, those mad, drunken screams of his father. They filled his young body with terror, right to the bone. He cried softly into his pillow until the screaming stopped and a slam of the door rung through the air.

This sudden stop in screaming caught the young boy's attention. With carefulness not to be heard and fearful hesitancy that made him want to run and hide, he slowly opened his bedroom door and peered out into the living room.

All was quiet.

He could see a chair overturned and his mother crying silently on the floor over a broken plate. Judging off what he had seen far too many times before, he guessed that somehow his mother's meal had been unsatisfactory for his over demanding father. He had probably seen something wrong with it, threw it on the floor, and smacked his mother around for not making it right.

Tommy never understood why his father never liked his mother's meals. He thought they were just fine. Then again, he never understood anything his father did.

Without a word or even an acknowledging glance from his weary mother, Tommy went over to the kitchen and gathered up the glass shards of the broken plate. He tried to clean up the mess as best as he could before grabbing a piece of bread off the counter to have his own breakfast.

Just as he was finishing his meal his mother stood up and faced him with hollow, empty eyes.

"Your father's going to be gone today," she announced as she turned around and went to go clean something.

Excitement filled Tommy. This was one of his mother's secret signals. If his father was going to be gone all day that meant that his mother would allow him to play instead of making him do the normal ever-demanding chores that usually filled his day.

Tommy jumped down from his chair and bolted to his room. Hidden amongst the tattered shirts and worn-out boots in his dark, dingy closet was an old, holey three pointed hat. It had been a Christmas gift from his grandfather a couple years back. Tommy loved that hat. Whenever he put that hat on he stopped being Tommy the poor, lonely, abused boy and became Long Beard Tom, the most feared and ghastly pirate of all the seven seas.

Long Beard Tom raced outside and quickly found a long stick to become his sword.

"Fear me, wenches!" he screamed with a pirate accent as he hacked into his invisible enemies.

Those invisible enemies were usually taken shape into the image of his father. Tommy hated his father. He hated everything about him. He hated the way he talked, walked, smelled, but most of all he hated the way he would beat him senseless. It was because of this that Tommy hated all adults. He never wanted to become an adult. To become an adult meant becoming a cruel, mean, abusive asshole. Tommy often told his brother in private that he would rather die than become an adult.

Tommy had been greatly enjoying his day of freedom. He slayed adults as Long Beard Tom and hunted done robbers as the fabled cowboy hero, Wild Oats Tommy. It was an all-around good day.

Just after lunch Tommy decided to go outside and play as Spaceman Thomas but stopped when he heard a strange noise. He followed the noise to behind a bush were he saw a poor, sickly bird lying on its stomach. The old bird gasped for breath as it choked and wheezed for air.

Tommy stood there, frozen at the sight of the dying bird. His heart instantly filled with compassion and he knelt down over the small, gnarly thing. He gently picked the bird up and cradled it in his arms.

"Don't worry," he whispered as he carefully petted the bird's head, "I'll take care of you. No one dies when Dr. Tommy's around."

He then decided that the bird could not stay outside. In needed to be inside, safe and warm. After making sure that the coast was clear, he snuck back into his house and into his room. He knew that he would need to hide the dear bird in order to take care of it. He couldn't let his father or mother know. They would throw it out in a heartbeat.

Young Tommy spent the next couple of hours tending to the poor bird, never leaving its side. A quick, yet incredibly strong bond was formed between the two. The bird, desperately wanting to live; and the boy, desperately wanting a friend. He did his best to keep the bird warm and comfortable, often cradling the small thing in his arms and telling it grand tales of adventures they could have once it got better. He would try to give it water and even went outside to find a worm to give his new friend. In his small little heart, the young Tommy was thoroughly convinced that the bird would get better and that they would then go on all sorts of adventures together. He decided that the bird was going to be Long Beard Tom's beloved parrot and they were going to sail the seven seas together. Together they would slay adults and there would be nothing that could harm them.

His dreams were shattered in an instant, however, when he heard the wrecked noise of the front door slam.

_"__Helloooooo,"_ he heard his father call out drunkenly. Tommy could tell right away, just by the state of his voice, that this was going to be bad.

_"__Ain't anyone home?"_ his father called out again.

Tommy knew he needed to take care of his new friend. He had to protect him from his father's drunken wrath. He wrapped up the bird in his blanket, cradled him in his arms, and hide inside his closet, desperately praying that his father would pass out before he found them.

He could hear his father staggering about and continuing his drunken calls. His family knew better than to answer him when he was in a state like this. If they all had any sense, they would be running or hiding, praying that someone else takes the beating instead of themselves.

Tommy sunk down further into his closet when he heard his father open his door. The man staggered around in his room a bit, throwing clothes and blankets and whatever else he could find.

Tommy let out a sigh of relief as he saw his father give up and head back towards the door. But then dread filled him as his father stopped and turned around. He could tell by the cracks in the door that his father was looking curiously at the bowl of water on the floor. Tommy slammed his forehead into his hand for such a stupid mistake. He had forgotten the water he had been giving his new friend out on the floor which had no doubt given away his hiding place.

"Tommy?" his father called out as he slowly staggered towards his hiding spot.

Tommy held his breathe and froze as he saw his father's shadow slowly make its way towards where he and his friend were hiding.

Tommy jumped as his father suddenly threw open the closet door and glared down at them with fury and drunken confusion.

"What's that?" he asked pointing to the dying bird cradled in Tommy's little arms.

"He's my friend," Tommy stammered out with a shaking voice as he held his dear and only friend closer to his chest.

"Let me see it," he father demanded as he reached down.

"No!" Tommy exclaimed as he held his friend tighter.

"I said let me see it!" his father roared as he grabbed Tommy's head in one hand and bashed it into the wall.

It was as the room began spinning from the blow that Tommy's grip loosened and his companion was snatched from his hands. Dread and sickness overtook him as he saw his father yank the bird from his arms and throw him against the wall. His new little friend fell down to the floor motionless and dead.

"No!" Tommy cried out as he reached for his fallen friend.

After a sick and twisted laugh from his father, his father took up Tommy and also threw him against the wall. With a loud thud, Tommy's head bashed into the cracking plaster and then he tumbled hard onto the ground.

His vision was spotting but Tommy was able to look up and see his father slowly stalking towards him with a cruel and drunken smile smeared across his face.

"Ha!" his father rolled out. "What are you? Some kind of freak? You like to play with dead things in the closet?"

"He wasn't dead until you killed him!" Tommy cried as he looked towards the small, withered body of his dear, fallen friend.

"Is that right?" his father taunted.

What happened next was unspeakable. I wasn't able to talk about it for years. Something snapped inside his father, something cruel, animalistic, and horrible. His father beat into Tommy like he never had before. He held nothing back as he released his fury onto the poor, small, lonely child. Tommy cried out for help, but no one came. No one came when the crying stopped either. His father just kept beating on into that poor, bloody, now motionless body until he felt satisfied with himself. His father then went into the living room, had another beer, and then passed out.

Tommy never got up from the beating. He would never get up in that life again.

Tommy's mother was the first to realize what happen when she found her way back inside the house after hiding from her husband's wrath in the shed outside. She found that little, bloody body lying motionlessly and helplessly on the floor. After she saw that dead, little body and the passed out blood-covered drunk man in the living room, she took out a gun from the hall closet and shot him dead. She then turned the gun on herself, not being able to live with what she had allowed since she never came to her child's cries for help, only caring for her own wellbeing as she hid.

I know all this because as Tommy was being beaten to death I was outside, watching in from the window. I had been hiding in the bushes underneath that window reading a book I had found hidden in one of my mother's old trunks. Her secret signal for 'your father is going to be gone all day' was that I could spend my day reading. I had been keeping a watchful eye as Tommy played that day, as I normally did on days like this. He often got so caught up in playing that he never would realize it when his father came home. Whenever he did and he saw Young Tommy playing instead of working he would lay it into him. I had even seen him take up that old, diseased bird as I watched him. However, once I saw him starting to take care of the thing I got bored of watching him. I then went to my normal hiding spot and became engrossed in book I had found. I had been so adsorbed in the book that I had never even heard my father coming home. I didn't even hear him call out for anyone. The only thing that shocked me away from the book was hearing the desperate, painful screams from my poor little brother as our father beat the life out of him. I wanted to run in there and help him, but I was frozen. I couldn't move, I could only stare as my little brother was beaten to death.

I alone had to bury my family. I was the only one who attended the funerals. The rest of the town was too shocked and applauded at the tragedy to come and all of my other family had died last year in a house fire.

I was then placed into foster care and was adopted by a lovely teacher and his wife here in Amity Park. It was my father—my adopted father, my _real_ father—who was the one who was the first to really spark my love in books. It was because of him that I decided to become a teacher in the first place.

I stopped being able to see my poor little brother Tommy—Youngblood, as he is called now—long ago. He doesn't like to be seen by adults, afraid that they might hurt him like my father did. I'm still able to see where his presence is though, through the actions of the children he gets to play with him. That's all he ever wanted to do, play. Every night since he died, whether I've been able to see him or not, I read him a story before I go to bed. His favorite is _Treasure Island_.

Sometimes I still go back home to see his tombstone. I hate it though. It reminds me how I wasn't there for him when he needed me most. My only comfort is that he got his biggest wish—to never grow up.

His tombstone is simple and placed next to my parents. Some lovely words are engraved on its stone surface:

"May you never grow up, may you never grow old. Died at six years old. Here lies the body of young Thomas Lancer."


	2. The Life and Death of Sidney Poindexter

**I hereby do warn you that this story does contain issues such as abuse, rape, and suicide.**

**The Life and Afterlife of Sidney Poindexter**

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It wouldn't be until nearly a year after I switched lockers would I find it. It must have gotten caught in one of my textbooks after the whole switching lockers and Sam's whole Save the Frogs fiasco.

Tucker, Sam, Jazz, and I had all decided that this summer was going to be our best yet. We've all accepted that live was going to be different here on out for us—with the whole ghost hunting and Going Ghost that had now taken up the majority of our time. We decided that in between the catching ghosts and saving the world, we were just going to lie around, watch tv, and have as much fun as we possibly could while we still were young. Little did I know, however, that this particular summer was going to be a perfectly Dreadful Summer.

However, I'm getting a bit off topic. Back to what I found in that old textbook.

As I was going through my old schoolbooks, getting ready to make them all burst into blue ghostly flames with a wave of my hand, I found it. It was slightly moldy, yellowed from age, and very dusty. It was an old envelope with the words 'Whoever finds this first' scrolled across the top. I gently ripped off the edge and pulled out the crinkly, old pages that were tucked away inside.

After reading the first few lines at the top I instantly realized what it was. I let out a sad sigh then collapsed on my bed. I guess I had known all along that something like this had happened, but I just never really wanted to piece it together in my head. I didn't want to believe such a thing. Maybe part of me wanted to believe that if I never thought about it, it wouldn't exist. I guess that must be a problem a lot of us face—we don't want to believe or talk about something so we don't, even though we know very well that it does exist and that we need to talk about it as a whole.

I moved over to my desk and turned on the lamp overhead. This was important. I had to be sure I could take it all in.

I ran my fingers through my dark hair then let out another sad sigh. I bit back my denial and my unwillingness to accept it, and then read the letter.

Written on lined notebook paper with a shaky, black-ink wielding hand, the old, previously untouched note read:

To whoever finds this first,

I really don't know what I'm supposed to say in one of these. I've never written one before. I wanted to believe I never would…but I've accepted that's an impossibility now.

I guess the propose of these things are to answer _why_—that is, if anyone cares to ask 'why' in the first place. I doubt anyone will in my case. However, in case anyone who does find this actually does give some sort of rat's ass, I guess I will answer why—maybe for myself more than anything.

I was a person who should have never been born. I'm not just saying that just because I'm me. I wasn't supposed to exist. I never should have existed. The world would have been better off if I hadn't, really.

When my mother was sixteen she went to a family reunion here in Amity Park. While there, she met her older cousin, Walter, who—after falling in lust after her—raped her senselessly. After my mother found out he had gotten her pregnant, she threatened to tell everybody what he did unless he took care of her and the baby. He did it, not wanting to get beaten to death by his forever drunkenly abusive father.

I was never allowed to call him 'dad'. I was only ever allowed to call him 'Walter' because he said he never wanted a son like me.

Once, while drunk and on the verge of passing out, I remember Walter telling me that his greatest fear was to turn into his bastard father. I guess his greatest fear came to be, however. Every single night from the time I could walk my father would beat me until I was blue in the face. Whenever my mother tried to stop it he would turn on her and beat her instead. I finally one day had to sit my mother down and tell her to stop interfering. It hurt worse than any beating he could have given me to see her get hurt.

Bless her soul.

It wasn't but five years ago, when I was nine, that she died. Cancer took her. I still cry myself to sleep every night because I miss her so much. She was the only one who had ever been nice to me—nerd or not. She never cared how I wore my hair or if I wore glasses. She loved me.

I miss her so much.

If you look up, you'll see a mirror in the back of the locker you found this in. This was the last gift she ever gave me. I had always been picked on because of how I looked. She said that whenever I was to look in this mirror I was supposed to think of her and how much she loved me, and then to love me back the same. _I want you to know how special you are to me_, she told me. _Remember that and think of yourself in the same. _Every time I go to, or even get thrown in my locker, I touch it and I think of her.

God, I miss her. Such a swell woman she was.

School's always been hell for me. I've been nothing more to bullies than a punching bag. Every day! Day in—day out. All that school ever was to me was a place to get beaten up. Everyone did it! There was no escape from it! The football players, the cheerleaders, the teachers, and even the fellow nerds: they all did it, relentlessly!

I can handle Walter, I can handle the loss of my mother, but I can't handle the bullies! All I ever wanted was a safe haven in life. A place where I could learn and better myself so I wouldn't turn into Walter. Where I could one day learn to become a doctor and cure the cancer that took my mother. But the bullies destroyed that for me! I can't even have five minutes where someone's not pinning something to my back, stealing my glasses, dunking my head in the toilet, or using me as a punching bag! I just want it to stop!

Then again…I guess that's the 'why'. I just want it to stop. The bullying. Be it from Walter, the kids at school, or even the god that took my mother! I just want people to stop throwing me around and treating me however they want. I'm a person too! I have feelings! Have none of those bullies at school ever thought about what's going on with me at home while they take my lunch and shove it down my pants? No! All they ever think about is themselves.

Well, now I can't handle it anymore. I just can't. No one will miss me. Heck, I doubt anyone will even notice I'm gone.

My last hope and wish in this life is that if there be any sort of afterlife, let me use it to protect and avenge all those were bullied like me.

If you need me, I'll be hanging out in the boiler room…so to speak. Goodbye forever.

Sincerely,

Sidney Poindexter.

I laid down the letter and buried my face in my hands. _Oh Sidney,_ my mind roared out sorrowfully. I couldn't help it as tears silently ran down my face. I made no attempt at stopping them.

If I could, I would go back to Sidney's corner of the Ghost Zone and obliterate all the bullies that had ever laid a hand on him. Perhaps I could too, with the help of the Infi-map to find that 1950's style Casper High.

"Sidney, I'm so sorry," I breathed as I read over the note again.

I knew what I had to do.

The school hadn't officially locked its doors yet, even though it had been the last day of school. I carefully crept through the halls of my ever-familiar school, Casper High. _722…723…._It hadn't been hard to find the locker…_724._

I reached my intangible hand inside and felt around. There I found it. Sidney's mirror. It was just a rusty, old frame now—after having broken the mirror to trap Sidney in his forever 1950's ghostly version of Casper High.

After a quick bit of research, Tucker was able to find out where Sidney was buried. Next to his mother on a hill underneath a tree.

We placed his mirror and letter beside his headstone.

"I would have cared, Sidney," I confessed to the headstone, wishing with all my power that I could go back in time and make it all right for him. "And I would have done everything within my power to stop them."

"Me too," Sam said as she placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

"And me," Tucker added as he took Sam's hand.

We all had a moment of silence for our ghostly friend.

What tortured me probably the most of the whole experience, was that even after death nobody had even cared to check Sidney's locker to see if he had left something in there. No one had read his suicide note until I happened to find it decades later.

The next day when I went to go blast every single one of those bullies who roamed the halls of that 1950's Casper High in the Ghost Zone back into their previous life—that was, until Sidney stopped me.

"What do you think you're doing, Buster?" he asked in his irritatingly nasal voice.

I then explained to him all that I had discovered. I told him of my discovery of the note, the realization about the mirror, and the memorial service Tucker, Sam, and I had had the day previously.

"Hold your horses there, Clyde," he said as he raised up his hands as I was about ready to attack the bullies again. "Ever since you and me did our old switchero way back when, thanks to you I've been the bee's knees around here! Now, don't go messing this up for me!"

"But don't you want me to get payback for you?" I asked, shocked.

Sidney waved his hands and did a hearty chuckle. "Oh, don't you worry about that, Mister. These bullies here got their penance from the Lunch Lady ages ago. Trust me—you do _not_ want to change her menu!"

I looked around at all those retro ghosts, walking the halls, thinking about how each of them had no doubt done their amount of personal torture on Poindexter. "So, what? You've just forgiven them for all that they did to you?"

Sidney shook his head. "In a way. You see, kiddo, part of what makes us ghosts is that we each take something with us when we pass over from the human life to the ghost one. It's something that we held dear. It becomes our obsession here in the afterlife. For Skulker, it was hunting. For Johnny 13, it was Kitty. For you, its saving people. But for me, however, it was never about the actual bullies. It was about saving the ones who were being bullied. What happened in my previous life, I don't care. It's over. I'm already dead. They can't do any more harm to me. But if I can save someone now from the same fate as me…that's my obsession. That's my purpose."

He must have been able to see by the confusion on my face that I just wasn't getting it. They had caused him to commit suicide? How could he stand to still be around those assholes even in the afterlife?

"Danny," he began while trying to wield me away from the sight of his ghostly classmates, "if there's one thing I learned in my former life it's to not kick somebody while they're down. A lot of these guys, after our little run-in made me more popular, it kind of opened their eyes to what they had been doing to me for so long. Many have apologized and feel bad about it. If I or even someone on my behalf were try to take revenge now, that would just be acting like a bully. Sometimes, Danny, as hard or as illogical it might seem, sometimes we just have to forgive and move on. Otherwise, well, it can become an obsession; and there are some obsessions that we ghosts do not want to have. Being angry and being a bully is one of them. That's just a bit of wisdom from an old timer for ya."

I realized then that Sidney was never going to let me take revenge for him no matter what I said. I had a hard time grasping what he was trying to teach me; but maybe someday I would, when I was older.

However, as I left to go back to my own Casper High a thought couldn't help but to strike me.

What had the Lunch Lady done in order to get revenge on those bullies?


End file.
